Jason Todd Ready, founder of the U.S. Border Guard, entered a house in Gilbert, Arizona opened fire, killing four people before turning the gun on himself on May 3 according to authorities.

On May 3, Jason Todd Ready, founder of the U.S. Border Guard, entered a house in Gilbert, Arizona opened fire, killing four people before turning the gun on himself according to Gilbert Police Sgt. Bill Balafas in a Los Angeles Timesarticle.

Ready, 39, who went by “J.T.”, was a former Marine who had been referred to as a racist, an extremist and a bigot who was involved in local politics according to The Times.

The shooting is under investigation, but is being described as a case of domestic violence. The house is where Ready lived with his girlfriend Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47; her daughter, Amber Nieve Mederos, 23; and he daughter’s boyfriend, Jim Franklin Hiott, 24. Ready also shot Amber’s daughter, Lily Lynn Mederos, who was a 15-month-old girl who died while being treated at a hospital The Times reported.

The Associated Press reported via CBS News, that Ready’s Guard group, a volunteer group, dressed in military fatigues and body armor, while carrying assault rifles as they patrolled for illegal immigrants in the desert south of Phoenix.

“We’re not going to sit around and wait for the government anymore,” Ready said in a July 2010 interview with The Associated Press. “This is what our Founding Fathers did.”

Ready tried multiple times to enter the political scene in Arizona and even appeared with former state Senate President Russell Pearce at an anti-illegal-immigration rally in June 2007 according to an article by The Republic via azcentral.com. The article reports that Pearce, who was defeated last November in a recall election and is the first vice chairman of the Arizona Republican Party is running for Senate again for District 26. The new district is in Mesa.

Pearce, who was an author of S.B. 1070 has worked to distance himself from Ready, since he found out about Ready’s extreme views according to an article by the Huffington Post.

“I spent much of my day resisting efforts by those in the media to get me to make a statement. Today’s events have nothing to do with me and no connection to me,” Pearce told AP.

Jason Todd Ready was exploring the possibility to run for sheriff in Arizona’s Pinal County. (Courtesy JT Ready Facebook page)

Ready’s ties to other extremist groups included the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group that advocates citizenship for those of “pure White blood,” with “no Jew or homosexual” allowed to be citizens, according to The Times. Ready left the group when he turned his focus towards political offices. Ready was exploring the possibility to run for sheriff in Arizona’s Pinal County.

Huffington Post reported that Ready was a member of a group called the Arizona Minutemen Project. He also received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines in 1996 after being court-martialed twice The Times reported.

At the top of the U.S. Border Guard website on April 3 was the following comment, “The US Border Guard is extremely saddened by the untimely loss of our founder, J.T. Ready and the other souls lost in such a senseless act of violence. Our sympathies go out to all of his family and friends during this time of unbelievable grief and pain. God bless you, J.T. you will be fiercely missed.”

ASTANA, May 4 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is planning to establish maintenance centers for Russian arms and military equipment in service with the Kazakh Armed Forces in Kazakhstan, the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation said on Friday.

Russia is ready to transfer the relevant technology to Kazakhstan, he added.

An aircraft maintenance center will be the first such facility, he said.

The Kazakh military has mainly Russian arms and military equipment, including up to 1,000 main battle tanks (T-80, T-72 and Т-62), some 2,500 infantry fighting vehicles (BMP-1 and BMP-2) and armored personnel carriers (BTR-80A and BTR-82A), around 200 self-propelled artillery systems, and at least 150 Uragan and Grad multiple rocket launchers.

A double car bombing in Russia’s troubled North Caucasus killed at least 14 people and injured more than 120 just days before Vladimir Putin returns to the Kremlin, officials said Friday.

The attacks late Thursday outside Dagestan’s main city, which authorities said may have been triggered by suicide bombers, were the deadliest in the Caucasus in months and smashed any illusion of increasing stability.

The power of the blasts sent huge yellow flames into the night sky, reduced cars to burned wreckage and left a crater in the ground, television pictures showed.

A representative of the regional health ministry told Agence France Presse that 13 people died on the spot while another victim died later in a hospital.

One more person is considered missing, said a health ministry official. Another 122 people were injured, and 83 were hospitalized, the emergencies ministry said.

The latest attacks come just days before President Dmitry Medvedev cedes the Kremlin on May 7 to president-elect Putin who famously pledged to “wipe out (militants) in the outhouse” and has vowed to destroy Islamic militants.

Investigators said the first blast went off on the outskirts of the city of Makhachkala when a car laden with explosives was detonated near a traffic police post at 10:10 pm (18:10 GMT) damaging nearby buildings and cars but causing no fatalities.

The second car bomb went off 15 minutes later hitting policemen, rescue workers and passers-by who had gathered at the scene, investigators said.

Regional police said in a statement that the first blast went off when a suicide bomber parked and detonated his vehicle near the traffic police post.

A representative of the Dagestan regional investigators, speaking to AFP, refused to confirm the report but said investigators believed that a suicide bomber caused the second blast when he drove a vehicle into the crowd.

The force of the second blast was equal to around 100 kilograms of TNT equivalent, police said.

State television said it appeared that the initial blast was aimed at attracting emergency workers and security forces to the scene who were then hit by a more powerful second explosion.

The regional health official said authorities had found one female foot and two male feet at the scene of the blast, adding that the two suicide bombers might be among the dead.

The twin attacks appeared to bear the hallmarks of bombings conducted by radical militants fighting the Kremlin in the Caucasus where they seek to establish an Islamist state.

The blasts were by far the deadliest attacks in the Caucasus this year and deal a huge blow to Kremlin hopes of restoring relative stability to a region that has been a headache for Moscow since the collapse of the USSR.

Interior minister Rashid Nurgaliyev ordered security to be stepped up as the country gears up for a national holiday to celebrate victory in World War II on May 9.

He added that militants aimed to sow panic by staging terror acts.

“We should fully understand that they are not human, and they are not able to return to peaceful life,” he said in comment released by his office.

Medvedev’s administration said the president had tasked the head of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, with rendering all necessary assistance to families of those killed and wounded.

Putin once said “I sometimes feel sorry” for the militants because of the lack of opportunities available to them in the impoverished Caucasus.

The Kremlin fought two wars against separatist rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s but the insurgency has now become more Islamist in tone and has spread to neighboring regions such as Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Londoners are reeling from reports that missiles, for the first time since World War II, will be deployed on the roofs of the city’s buildings.

The move, they are told, is necessary to provide security during the upcoming Summer Olympics.

The Ministry of Defence has proposed the installation of surface-to-air missiles on a number civilian sites, including a water tower in Bow Quarter, a gated community overlooking the Games park.

The ministry said in a leaflet sent to occupants of the East London flats on Saturday it had chosen the site as one of several proposed plots for its high velocity missile system (HVM) because it offered “an excellent view of the surrounding area and the entire sky above the Olympic Park.”

The move has been deemed necessary to protect the hundreds of thousands expected to visit the capital during the Games.

But an increasing number of Londoners are voicing concern over what they perceive as an overly extreme measure.

SH: Protest and eviction

In a new twist, the Bow resident who revealed the government’s plan to locate the HVM system on his roof claims he is being evicted after blowing the whistle. Brian Whelan, 28, announced on Twitter he will be kicked out only days before the Olympics and suggested the move was linked to his exposing the missile plan.

“Very sad to learn my tenancy is to be terminated and I will be forced to leave my apartment days ahead of the opening ceremony.”

Asked whether he was being evicted for talking about the missile plan, the freelance journalist said, “I can only speculate that may be the landlord’s motivation.” However, his landlord insisted the matter was a “domestic” one that had nothing to do with the missile story.

The move made headlines when Whelan went public with the plan, giving numerous media interviews on the subject.

Whelan told Reuters, “there was no consultation, no one knocked on the door … You just wake up one morning, there’s a leaflet telling you they are going to put missiles on the roof. I can’t imagine the circumstances that would require you to fire missiles over a highly populated area.”

He claimed he had been told by the letting agent that the landlord was “unhappy with us.”

“I do not regret whistle-blowing on the Olympics missiles plan,” he added.

“I think it absolutely stinks, the timing of this. I think it’s very convenient for the Ministry of Defence, who have failed to answer any questions, (that) I’m going to be moved.”

In an interview, he said claims from his landlord that he and his girlfriend had refused to sign a new lease were “not true at all”.

But despite his imminent eviction, Whelan insists this is not the end of the fight. He says residents in Bow and other proposed Olympics missile sites including Blackheath would be meeting on Friday to voice concerns about the plans. He is gaining online backing with a Facebook page entitled “Support Brian Whelan From Eviction”.

Another resident of the Bow Quarter apartments, Claude Grongnet, 78, added fuel to the missile debate, telling Reuters: “I am very much against it. It is sending the wrong signal.” The retired translator suggested the emplacement would make the complex a target and pose an unnecessary risk to civilian lives. “I don’t think it’s protecting us, when there are 700 flats.”

“How did something that was supposed to be a joyful celebration end up becoming a joyless and fearful cross between a North Korean Party Congress and a minor war?” blogged science writer Michael Hanlon in the Daily Mail online edition.

If given final approval, the plan for SAM batteries would be the first time anti-aircraft weapons have been deployed in London since the end of World War II.

But the move, included in the Games’ $1.6 billion security budget, follows the precedent set by previous Olympics such as the Beijing Games in 2008, where a battery of surface-to-air missiles were deployed a kilometer south of its showpiece venues.

Greece placed dozens of US-made Patriot missiles around Athens some weeks before the 2004 Olympics, the first Summer Games after the September 2001 attacks on the United States.

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[The experts are finally doing their job, advising the President on the folly of the path he has chosen. They have pointed-out the futility of claiming that he is protecting the homeland, when all he has been doing is antagonizing our potential adversaries for the sake of protecting Europe. When it comes to the Republicans, they are even more in the dark, because they have never seen a weapons system that most of them didn’t like. They are trying to outgun Obama by hollering that he has sold-out to the Russian pressure, when what he has been doing is just the opposite–causing Russian pressure on their trigger finger to increase.

Retreating from a foolish foreign policy decision is not weakness, it is something that used to be known as “Statesmanship.”]

WASHINGTON—The National Academy of Sciences is casting more doubt on whether the Obama administration’s European-based missile defense shield can protect the United States and recommends scrapping key parts of the system.

The academy’s assessment could complicate White House efforts to persuade Congress to fund the still-developing program. Though the academy says the plans would protect Europe effectively, some lawmakers already are asking why the U.S., at a time of tight budgets, should spend billions of dollars on a system that provides limited homeland defense.

The conclusions from the academy, which advises the government on science and technology, were contained in a letter to lawmakers obtained by The Associated Press.

The academy’s letter bolsters two earlier reports by Defense Department advisers and congressional investigators that said the European system faced significant delays, cost overruns and technology problems.

The letter is dated April 3 and addressed to the chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, Rep. Michael Turner, R-Ohio, and the panel’s top Democrat, California Rep. Loretta Sanchez. It is based on unclassified parts of a broad academy report on U.S. missile defense capabilities not yet released.

Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, said he was unaware of the academy’s report and declined to comment.

Republicans, who have been questioning President Barack Obama’s national security credentials ahead of the November elections, are likely to seize on the letter to bolster their argument that the European plans were poorly thought through and designed to appease Russia.

The defense shield is one of Obama’s top military programs. Soon after he took office in 2009, he revamped a Bush administration missile defense plan that had been a chief source of tension with Russia. The Russian government believed the program is aimed at its missiles, while the U.S. said the system was designed to counter any Iranian missile threat.

While Russia initially welcomed the Obama administration’s changes, it since has ramped up its criticism. On Thursday, Russia’s top military officer went so far as to threaten pre-emptive military action on missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe if the U.S. goes ahead with its plans.

Obama’s plan called for slower interceptors than the earlier plan that could address Iran’s medium-range missiles. The interceptors would be upgraded gradually over four phases, culminating in 2020 with newer versions, still in development, that the administration says will protect Europe and the United States. The early phases call for using Aegis radars on ships and a more powerful radar based in Turkey. Later phases call for moving Aegis radars to Romania and Poland.

The academy says the proposed system could effectively defend Europe and U.S. troops based there against short- and medium-range missiles from Iran if the system uses an interceptor that is fast enough. But it dismisses the administration’s claims that the system eventually will offer protection to the United States as well. It says the system is “at best less than optimal for homeland defense.”

It recommends eliminating the last phase of the Obama plan because it says the interceptors planned for that phase will not be fast enough to take down intercontinental missiles launched from Iran. It says the Bush administration plan would have faced the same problem.

It also recommends abandoning a satellite tracking system now in development that the administration has argued could solve weaknesses in the system’s radars. A report by the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory group, argued that the radars planned for the shield were too weak to track missiles effectively. The administration has denied that and said its satellite system would bolster the missile shield’s capabilities.

But in blunt language, the academy rejects that claim, saying the satellites would be too far away from the threat to provide useful data. It also says the system would cost up to three times the administration’s estimates.

According to a congressional aide who has seen the academy’s study, it estimates the satellite system would cost $27.7 billion. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

The report recommends “terminating all effort” on the satellite project.